Shopping in Jenin

On the second Saturday of July, I visited Jenin with a group of mostly women from the Arab-Israeli town of Abu Ghosh, about 2o minutes west of Jerusalem. I connected with them by calling up the director of the Jenin chamber of commerce, who connected me to a man who coordinates the trips, who connected me to the woman who organizes the bus from Abu Ghosh. A frend and I signed up to hitch a ride, which cost 20 shekels ($5), really not much for international travel. Here's the piece I wrote for this week's Jerusalem Report:


And here's a piece my friend Daniel did for NPR's Marketplace, with photos from yours truly.

Ahead of the trip I was a little nervous about visiting Jenin because it was not known as the safest of places during the Second Intifada; however, a lot changes in a few years. When I got to the outdoor market and the downtown, I felt mostly sensual overload by all the vendors selling used clothing, while in alleyways live chickens squawked miserably from their cages in poultry shops. Later I noticed this above the felafel stands on street level:

I think this article speaks for itself in terms of the identity issues Arab-Israelis feel when they cross the Green Line that separates Israel Proper from the West Bank. There is also a conversation there with urban planner Yosef Jabareen, of the Technion in Haifa, who explains that Arabs inside of Israel lack true cities and so they see the West Bank and beyond - Jordan, Egypt - as opportunities to feel like strangers among Arabic speakers.

Nimr Jabbar, one of the four men who joined a busload of women and kids to buy in Jenin.

Jenin District Gov. Moussa Qaddura.

Palestinian Fair Trade

I'm back from the dead. In my three-month hiatus I've been getting my act together in print and online, writing up a storm about suburbanization in Israel at GreenProphet.com, and publishing an interesting piece on Palestinian fair trade in the Jerusalem Report. It's not available online; here are files.









I learned a lot from reporting this piece. The article was born in a roundabout way; I went to the Ministry of Agriculture in Bethlehem to speak to specialists and make connections for my thesis research on Palestinian farming. Here I am on a Bethlehem roof.


One of the officials I spoke to was Odeh, who said "you are most welcome in my home any time." He mentioned he was a grape farmer.

A week later I called him up and took along reliable Anthony for a day in Beit Ommar, a town of 15,000 on the road between Bethlehem and Hebron in the West Bank. Odeh took us to the office of the Beit Ommar Cooperative, where he started a nursery to sell cheap olive saplings and herbs to local farmers. We went to his house and met his wife, son and two daughters, along with his dad. Lunch was yoghurt with rice. Odeh also showed us the modern and traditional methods of grape farming. He mentioned he was trying to market the cooperative's grapes via Fair Trade to Europe.

I had filed the day away mentally when my editor at the Jerusalem Report said they were looking for a story on Palestinian affairs. Some interviews later, the article was born. By the way, if you are in the region and want to do Odeh a favor, he's looking for someone to clean up the English on the cooperative Web site.

Here are some of the photos that didn't make it into the piece:
Odeh getting the radio treatment in the Beit Ummar nursery.

Odeh looking out at his family's vineyards.

Odeh on his cellphone from his roof. In the background is the settlement of Karmey Tzur.
Odeh's father, who speaks Hebrew from years spent working on Israeli construction sites.

The red words on the white paper above the door say "Wizarat Al-Zira'a" - aka Ministry of Agriculture.